The Twirling Botanist

By Thomas Harding

This is the second in a series that features world champions who live in Jefferson County, W.Va.

Baton twirling. It’s not a major sport like baseball or football, but it is big enough to have been invited as a demonstration sport by the International Olympic Committee.

Canadian-born Stacy Singer is not just a baton twirling world champion, she is a seven-time world champion. She has won more world championships than any other female twirler—ever. She was named the 1985, 1989, and 1990 Canadian Junior Female Athlete of the Year, the only person ever to win this coveted award three times. Stacy has a street named after her.
“Baton twirling in Canada is a boutique sport,” said Doug MacQuarrie, executive director for the True Sport Foundation, which sponsors the Junior Female Athlete of the Year. “Anytime an athlete achieves that level greatness, it is a big deal,” said MacQuarrie, “To do so two years in a row, three times in total, is certainly a very significant achievement.”

“Stacy Singer is an icon,” said Sandi Wiemers, president of the U.S. Twirling Association and vice president of the World Twirling Federation. Wierners first saw Singer as a judge at one of Stacy’s competitions when Stacy was seven years old. “She is the Martina Navratilova of the baton twirling community. There are names of people in any sport that have accomplished great things, and their names never completely go away,” said Wiemers. “Stacy is one of them.”

To find Stacy’s true fan club, you have to go to the You Tube website. Here you find scratchy videos of Stacy Singer from age eight through 16, spinning, twirling, throwing, cart-wheeling, all at dizzying speeds. It looks like someone has sped up a home movie, but, in fact, it is in real time. Twirlers go wild over these videos.

She is an amazing twirler, I remember when I was little and twirling I would follow her around, I really idolized her and got her autograph which was such a big deal to us little twirlers.
My god ... genuine talent. Amazing, I am gobsmacked. She uses that Baton as if it were another limb, so natural. Maybe played with one in the womb !!!!!! Superb.
Wow. I Am A Twirler And Have Never Seen Anyone Do Anything Like That Before. That Is Just Amazing.
holy cow. she is incredible.
best twirler ever!!!

History of Twirling

It is hard to trace the precise origins of baton twirling. The sport/hobby is closely related to juggling, staff twirling, and maybe even Morris dancing. Baton twirling gained popularity in the United States in the early 1900s. High-stepping girls led marching bands in parades or at football games. Young girls donned skirts shorter than their grandmothers liked and strutted their stuff to the delight of the crowds.

Marching became more complicated with the addition of intricate dance steps as well as complex twirling. Soon, mastering the choreography of a baton twirling routine required highly developed skills acquired through training and practice. The result was spectacular and amazing to watch: Drum majorettes, young nymphets attracting the eyes of many a young boy as they danced and spun down the streets of cities across North America.

When Sandi Wiemers was a young girl in the 1950s, she was a drum majorette. “It was completely different back in the Jurassic days,” she said. “What we did was a performance. We marched in parades. We did simple, showier things. We had longer batons, often with braiding on. It was not a sport.”

At the time there were few girls’ sports programs in schools. “It was supposedly bad for us,” says Wiemers. “We were probably the frustrated jocks of our time.” Girls of this generation could either be cheerleaders or majorettes.

“We decided we would make [twirling] more than it was. We started getting into a competitive activity,” said Wiemers. Around this time American Legion clubs were providing competitions for drum majors and bands. “That was for the guys,” remembers Wiemers. “Then the girls got involved and that was the start of majorette competitions. And that is how competitive baton twirling got started.”



From there batons got smaller and craftier. The girls would do more with their sticks. Baton twirling evolved into a sport, created in the United States and, later, exported around the world. The first word championships were held in 1980 in Seattle, Wash. The sport is now popular around the world, with the strongest countries being Japan, the United States, France, Italy, and Canada.

Baton twirling has yet to make it into the Olympics. There simply aren’t enough countries participating yet, said Wiemers. She doesn’t think she will see the sport in the Olympics during her lifetime. “We don’t have the backing or corporate funding that other Olympic athletes have,” she said. “Without the recognition it is hard to attract funding, and without the funding it’s hard to build up the recognition.”

Getting Started

Stacy Singer grew up in Regina, Saskatchewan, a central-southern Canadian province north of Montana and North Dakota. Regina is a city of 200,000 people. The city’s homepage says of the place, “it shoots right out of the plains.” Named in 1882 for England’s Queen Victoria, Regina is home to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Academy, training grounds for the “Mounties.” Citizens of Regina are known, perhaps unfairly, as Reginans.

Stacy Singer has been a Reginan all her life. She lived there until she was 22. Her family—mother, father, and younger brother—still lives there. Her mom Donna works at a local college. Her dad Fred works at a steel plant. Her brother still lives at home.

Stacy Singer first encountered twirling when she was three years old. Her babysitter had a daughter who twirled. Stacy saw the girl twirl and told her mom she wanted to twirl. Her mother called the Martin School of Dancing to ask if they had classes started for girls Stacy’s age, but was told Stacy had to wait until she was four years of old. Stacey cried. “I called another gym to see if they would take a three-year-old.” remembers Donna Singer. “They said they would, but I stuck with the Martin School in the end.”

“I remember the first time I caught a one turn,” said Stacy. “I tossed it up and turned around and caught it. I was four yeas old. I remember I wouldn’t leave the class till I got it. I was the first in the class who caught it, and when I did it I started crying.”

Stacy Singer is known for her dedication. Her coach Maureen Johnson says that unlike other children before or since, Stacy drove her own practice schedule. Her mother would leave the gym and Stacy would decide when it was time to stop. It was over only when she had mastered whatever trick she had been working.

She had her first twirling accident when she was still young. She was at home, practicing a trick in the family room. Her dad was reading the newspaper in an adjacent room. She was trying a double-elbow Fugimi catch, a particularly hard throw, especially for someone of that age. After many attempts she nailed it. “I was very excited,” says Stacy. “I decided to celebrate by putting the baton in my mouth and then doing a cart-wheel. The baton went down my throat. My dad had to pull it out. There was blood everywhere.” Neither this incident nor any other injury in the years to come put little Stacy off her twirling.

When Stacy was five years old, her parents entered her into a talent contest in a local mall. Stacy did well enough to win a trip to Disneyland for the whole family. This is when the family realized for the first time that Stacy had something special.

Stacy watched the big girls twirl their batons with amazing speed and astonishing combinations in intricate patterns. She told her coach, “I can do that.” Her coach would tell her that she could do that when she was older. Stacy ignored her coach, went home and practiced the tricks for hours until she mastered them. She would show them to her coach at the next lesson. The coach had no choice; the new tricks were integrated into her routine.

With her dance and gym lessons as well, Stacy practiced four hours a day, eight hours a day on weekends. Her life became baton twirling.

When Stacy was seven, her mother pulled her from baton lessons. Stacy had also been in an elite gymnastics group and her mother thought gymnastics held more potential. Stacy didn’t say anything about being yanked from twirling. In fact, she almost stopped talking. She was depressed without the twirling. Finally, after four months, Stacy was allowed to return to twirling. “She just couldn’t be away from it,” says her coach Maureen Johnson. “She loved her baton when she was a little girl. She slept with it at night.”

Moving Up

At eight years of age Stacy went to the world junior championships held in Frankfurt, Germany—a long way to travel for a young girl from Regina, Canada. Up until then, the sport had been dominated by the girls from the United States. The best performance by a Canadian had been an eighth-place finish. There were no expectations for Stacy to do well. After all, she was only eight.

Stacy and her mom arrived in Frankfurt a week before the games. They had decided they needed a few days to get used to the different climate and the shift in time zone. The first event, the compulsories, would determine Stacy’s place in later rounds. If she did the best in compulsories, she would perform last in later rounds, with the advantage of knowing how the other contestants had done previously.

“After the first round, Europe went wild about her,” remembers Stacy’s mother. “She was so little and cute, and they couldn’t believe some of the stuff she could do.” Europe didn’t have a twirler in the finals that year. The audience seemed to adopt Stacy as their champion. The cheering helped bring Stacy to a higher level.

For the championship, Stacy’s second coach, Alan Kramer, had invented a new move. They explained to the young Stacy that it was called the “monster roll.” The baton was rotated around one arm, then the neck, then the other arm, just like the three heads of a monster. To top it off, Stacy would step around and spin at the same time. No one had ever seen anything like it before.

“This was a huge breakthrough,” says coach Maureen Johnson. “Stacy was adorable. Even at that age she was exceptionally smart and a very, very strong competitor. She knew what she had to do. She had no nerves. She was all athletic ability and natural performance.”
“The look in her eyes was amazing,” says her mother Donna. “Stacy was star-struck. I felt really proud of her. Super excited. Beyond words.”

Stacy became an instant celebrity at home. She appeared on local and national television shows. She became a household name. As a result of Stacy’s gold medal in Frankfurt, the Saskatchewan provincial government officially recognized baton twirling as a sport. From that point forward, funding was available for administrative staff and program development in the region. Baton twirling had come of age in Canada, all thanks to an eight-year-old from Regina with frizzy hair.

Pressure

Some parents might say that putting such a young child under so much pressure might not be good for her. Indeed, the minimum age for the world baton twirling championships was moved a few years ago from eight to 12 years of age for this very reason.

“There are quite a lot of kids who burn out,” says U.S. Twirling’s Sandi Wiemers. “If they start too young they miss out on everyday kids’ stuff. It is important for kids to be kids. Some kids are pushed and trained so hard they leave. We never see them again. The experience is evidently not a happy one.”

Parental pressure can be a real problem for young athletes, according to Dr. Edward Etzel, sports psychologist at West Virginia University. Etzel has worked with athletes and their parents from the university level all the way through to the Olympics. When it comes to children competing at high athletic levels, he gets concerned about whose needs are being met. He believes that parents should examine their own motivations and listen to their children more.

“Too often in our society, parents treat their kids like little adults,” says Etzel. And this, he says, can be damaging to the children. Kids should engage in sporting activities for fun and to be with friends. When the kids are no longer having fun, the parents should pull back on their encouragement, said Etzel. Some kids can handle the pressure, though, he added. These kids can deal with intense activities and long hours of practice.


Apparently this was true of young Stacy Singer. “I saw the way other kids handled the pressure,” says Donna Singer. “It was hard for them. If they dropped the baton once, they got nervous. For some reason Stacy was cool. That’s where your top athletes are. They do well under pressure; it doesn’t bother them.”

Coach Johnson agrees. “Yes there was a lot of pressure. Possibly too much. But with Stacy’s intelligence, she was able to deal with it all. She came out of it very happy psychologically. It helped her in everything she does. It did not damage her.
Stacy says she would not only do it all again, but if she has a daughter she will encourage her to do the same. “Because of what twirling has made me, if I want to do something, I do it. I never feel that I can’t do it. I think that’s a good quality.”

The Champion

At that 1985 world championship there had been no pressure on the unknown Stacy. But after that year, there was immense pressure on the now nine-year-old returning champion. “The United States was out to get her,” says her mother. “They were surprised that first year; they didn’t want to be surprised again.”

Coach Maureen Johnson agrees. “Stacy didn’t feel real pressure until she won gold. That is when the hard work started. She won bronze for the next two years. That was the hard part. Overall, she loved doing it so much she wouldn’t give it up.”

“It was a horrible time,” remembers Stacy. She thought she had peaked. According to those who knew her, when she had been young she was performing to please her mother. Now she was doing it for herself.

Nine-year-old Stacy was determined to get the championship back. She was hard on herself. Sometimes she would hurt herself. She would whip herself on the ankle with the baton or throw it into the air and let it hit her on the head. “I got over it,” says Stacy. “I learned how to move on. I always wanted to be better than the other girls I knew. Why? Because I thought I could. How? I don’t know.”

When she was 11, in 1988, Stacy went to the world championships in Japan. She brought a suitcase full of non-fish food. Stacy didn’t like fish. “People expected me to win,” says Stacy. “I was crying. I told my coach that I didn’t want to do this. There was too much pressure. But I had no choice. If you decide to come this far, you suck it up and do the best you can. As soon as you second-guess yourself, you are screwed.”

For this competition, she had a new trick up her sleeve, called a triple illusion, catch, back catch. The best trick other top athletes could do was a triple illusion with a plain catch. Adding a back catch was unheard of. When the athletes are competing at such a high standard, one catch can make all the difference. She pulled it off and won gold. “It was a huge relief for everyone,” says Johnson.

Starting in 1988 Stacy won six consecutive world championships—that’s every world championship from the time she was 11 until she was 16 years old. She finished off in 1993 with two golds, one at the senior baton twirling championship, in her first year of senior competition, and one in the team event. No girl or woman has ever won this many titles. The only twirler who has come close is a male twirler from Japan who retired at age 30.

Transition

Over the years Stacy had suffered many small injuries. But one problem persisted. Her hip hurt. And it was hurting more and more as she got older. At 16 years of age, Stacy went to see her doctor. He had some bad news for her. If she continued to twirl at the top level, he told her, she would end up in a wheelchair.

“This was a hard decision for Stacy,” says her coach. “It was hard for her, but it was harder for rest of us. Looking back, it was a good time to retire.”

“When she quit, it was hard on her. She lost her identity,” confesses her mother. “To be honest, though, we were all ready to move on as well.”

Stacy went cold turkey. She had been twirling for 13 years. “I think I had to just stop,” says Stacy. “It had been my life for so long. How else could I become normal again? I was so used to always having something to do. I used to have no free time. I found it hard at first. I didn’t know what to do with myself.”

She did high school things like hang out with friends, watch television, go to parties. “I found it all a little bit boring,” she remembers. Along the way Stacy picked up some body art, she bleached her hair, and got to know boys.

After a few years’ break Stacy started thinking that coaching might be her future. She coached twirlers around the world. Invitations and requests rained down on her like so many arrows of love. She probably could have taken over her old coach’s dance studio. But coaching was not for her.

“I love the kids to pieces,” says Stacy. “They are like my little sisters. I think it’s hard for someone who has been good at something to coach. When one of the kids has trouble doing it I want to do it myself. I would rather be the one competing. I can’t watch. I get so nervous for them, but I have no control over what’s going on. I worry they haven’t prepared enough.”

Then she went to the University of Regina to study biology. She had a hard time. She spent a lot of time asleep on the couch. Looking back, she acknowledges she was probably depressed. Life had become anti-climactic compared to the heady days of a globe-trotting world champion twirler. She dropped out of college.

The change from one activity to another is typically called a “transition” by the psychology community. Whether it be from kids leaving home (empty nesters) to retiring from a 30-year job on the railroad, change can be tough for all of us.

WVU’s Etzel says such transition challenges are common in sports, particularly at the higher levels. He says that most athletes transition successfully but that some struggle. Such athletes are so heavily invested in one activity that they find it hard to find another to participate in. Etzel added that having social support and alternative career options is critical to easy transitions.

After a while Stacy got bored with being bored. She was not happy with her boyfriend, and to avoid his company she started applying herself to her studies. To her surprise she found that studying was a bit like practicing twirling tricks: with hard work you felt a sense of achievement. She went back to college soon after. “I knew in my head I wanted to do something. I couldn’t do nothing. I didn’t know I could apply myself to something other than baton. Once I realized I could, it was fine.”

She got back into the swing of awards, this time of the academic variety, like the prestigious President’s Distinguished Graduate Student Award. She graduated at the top of her class, then went on to earn a Ph.D. in plant molecular genetics.

 “I think it is very difficult to be on top of your game and then suddenly you don’t have success,” says Wiemers. “It’s a tough transition for people. It’s wonderful that Stacy has moved on. It shows a lot about her. ”

For her dad Fred, Stacy’s move into the world of research just adds to his sense of admiration. “I’m just as proud of her for getting her Ph.D. as for winning the world baton championships,” he said. “Actually, the Ph.D. is something that will help her for the rest of her life. Baton twirling is something that happened at certain stage of her life.”

Did success spoil Stacy Singer? Evidently not. Not long ago, Singer was the darling of her country, the Singer Throwing Machine, with a pixyish grin and boundless energy. Singer, who progressed from superb athlete to outstanding student, is about to make the transition towards becoming a distinguished scientist. Success is never a sure thing, but Singer’s potential is limitless. The lady’s still a champ.

—John Chaput, Sun Column, University of Regina.

In 2007 Stacy moved to Jefferson County. She drove three days from Canada with her luggage crammed into the back seat of her golden-orange saloon car and her dog in the front. She moved to West Virginia to join the USDA Fruit Research Station in Kearnysville. Stacy is likely to be in the area for two to four years. She spends her long days researching RNA silencing—it's a mechanism whereby RNA molecules turn off gene expression. “I’m working for the man,” she says. “So far I like it.”

Stacy enjoys science. But she doesn’t like being competitive in the science world. Once when she was pursuing doctoral studies she got into a race with another lab. She won, of course, and published the results in a journal called Plant Cell Report. But she didn’t like the race. “Competition is not good for science,” says Stacy, “It becomes about ego and money. Science is for society. So I don’t see a reason to compete. People should work together to get the best science out.”

“I would like to change the world, but I’m not sure I’m capable,” says Stacy. “If I decided to compete in the Tour de France, I would do it. I would give everything up, dedicate three years to doing it, and I would succeed. As I don’t want to, I won’t. But changing the world means changing other people and controlling their behavior. That’s much harder.”

Her old judge Sandi isn’t surprised by Stacy’s continued success. “It’s amazing that someone as effervescent, charismatic, and vivacious as a performer has that other side to her. I’m not saying that other twirlers are not smart, but they are not as interested in this type of thing. A lot of twirlers are very left brain. That’s the artistic side of the brain. They are not really in tune with mathematics or biology or things of that nature. Stacy Singer, well, she is an enigma.”

To see vintage footage of Stacy Singer in action, go to www.youtube.com and type “Stacy Singer.”